Tupolev, Andrei (1888–1972)

Prominent Soviet aircraft designer. Since 1922, the design
bureau which he founded and that now bears his name has built more than
100 different military and civilian aircraft, including the workhorse of
the Aeroflot fleet, the Tu-154. In one of the more bizarre stories of the
Great Purges, Stalin had the entire Tupolev design bureau arrested as "enemies
of the people" in 1938. Nothing changed in their work, except that they
were now all prisoners in the Gulag and that Tupolev's name was not mentioned
in public until his release in 1943.